!3R 



RARY OF CONGRESS, 



Shelf. __..S-7 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



//-. . 




^< 



- 





€tje |3uvitau Spirit 



BY 



/ 



RICHARD SALTER STORRS, D.D., LL.D. 



AN ORATION delivered before 
The Congregational Club in Tremont 
Temple Boston 18th December 
1889 and published by their request 





BOSTON AND CHICAGO 
Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society 



Iras u»ra* y< 

OF CONGRESS 
WASmWOTOIt 



3/93^.7 
■S7 



Copyright, 1890, by 
Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society 



Electrotyped and Printed by 
Samuel Usher, 171 Devonshire Street, Bosto?/, Mass. 



C^e puritan ^pittt 

AN ORATION 

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen : — 
When I rashly yielded to the request of 
your Committee, and promised to deliver an 
address before the Congregational Club on 
this occasion, I expected it to be that com- 
paratively simple and informal thing which 
one styles familiarly an Address ; delivered 
before a company of a few hundred persons, 
many of them, doubtless, my personal friends. 
I did not anticipate that in the air of Boston, 
a sup of which the early immigrants declared 
equal to a draught of English ale, and in the 
exuberant fancy of the Committee, what I had 
proposed might 

" suffer a sea-change 

Into something rich and strange," 

and be set forth to the public as an Oration, 
gathering this vast assembly by which I am 
partly animated but chiefly appalled. How- 
ever, you will not forget, I am sure, my modest 
promise ; and if I can not conduct you, as I 
can not, through any House Beautiful, such as 
Boston Orations are known and are expected 



Cfte puritan spirit 



to be, you will let me introduce you to an 
unobtrusive and commonplace structure of 
thought, such as may reasonably bear upon 
its low and unadorned lintel the name 
" Address." 

It is often said by those who desire the 

highest welfare of the nation, and who feel 

that to such welfare right moral and spiritual 

1 forces are first of all needful, that what this 

The Need of 

the puritan country chiefly needs, to maintain and exalt its 

Spirit ' J 

place in the world, is a larger measure of the 
Puritan spirit, in energetic development and in 
wide distribution. 

Fundamentally, the vast effort, pursued now 
for a hundred years, to plant churches at the 
West, with schools, colleges, seminaries of 
whatever class, to inspire and mold instruction 
there, has had in this feeling its impulse and 
motive ; and its value has been estimated, by 
those who have made it, by its success in this 
direction. The same thing is substantially 
true of the similar efforts now being made, 
with unsurpassed patience and energy, at the 
South and in the New West. The effort is 
to practically New Englandize the continent ; 
and however it has changed in our time, in 



€fte puritan spirit 



its special forms of manifestation, the Puritan 
spirit is that which has given to New England 
its characteristic place and power in the vastly 
enlarged national organism. The many insti- 
tutions, of rising rank and growing power, all 
over the vast area of the country, show the 
energy of this impulse, with its partial and 
perhaps its prophetic success. 

On the other hand, however, hardly any 
proposal meets fiercer opposition in many 
quarters than does this very one. "It is n 

precisely this Puritan spirit," multitudes say, th^iwIn 



" which we do not want. It would be well 
if it could be practically extirpated in New 
England itself. To carry it through the 
country would be to fetter and pervert the 
whole development of the nation, and to em- 
barrass or thwart its career. It may easily 
bring about a popular revolution. We need 
to move, distinctly and purposely, in the oppo- 
site direction ; to break away from restraints, 
to emerge finally from the earlier glooms, and 
to secure on all sides ampler tolerance, larger 
freedom of opinion and custom. The con- 
trary effort will be vain, and may be destructive, 
forcing a fierce, if not a fatal, explosion." 



Spirit 



8 €i)e puritan cSpirit 

Probably this feeling was never wider or 
more energetic than it is at this hour. The 
incessant inrush of immigration from abroad 
adds constantly to its volume. The expansion 
of population over wider spaces increases its 
extensiveness, if not its intensity. As secular 
interests become more prominent, and the 
towers of exchanges, newspaper offices, insur- 
ance and telegraph buildings, surpass and 
dwarf the spires of churches, it naturally in- 
creases ; and as men depart further from the 
inherited faith of their fathers, either in the 
direction of Vaticanism on the one hand, or 
of agnosticism on the other, this feeling be- 
comes more keen and controlling. In regard 
to no one subject, therefore, affecting our 
national development and career, is the contest 
fiercer than in regard to this ; and few signs 
appear that it is to subside, for years to come, 
in any general harmony of judgment. 

It may be worth while, then, to consider 
111 particularly what it is which really constitutes, 

)rt'IDE AREA OF 

puritan anc [ effectively differentiates, the Puritan spirit ; 
and to look at this as it has widely appeared 
in the world, not merely or mainly in this 
province of New England. New England is 



THE 

Spirit 



€l)e puritan spirit 



an important district, though it may not appear 
as vast as it once did, when one has lived for 
forty-odd years outside its bounds. But it is 
certainly by no means considerable, as ter- 
ritorially related to the surface of the earth, 
or even of the continent. Two hundred and 
seventy years are a considerable period of time, 
but they dwindle to insignificance before the 
recorded centuries of history. 

Perhaps enough has been said of the Puritan 
spirit as it has appeared in these immediate 
delightful surroundings. It has been sketched 
in poetry, and in picturesque prose, in philo- 
sophical discussion, and with elaborate elo- 
quence, with witty jest and in fascinating 
fiction ; sometimes, perhaps, with extravagant 
eulogy, and sometimes, we know, with 
extraordinary force of hatred and derision. 
There are those around me, on this platform, 
who have contributed memorably to this 
discussion, with ample learning, in admirable 
utterance, with a just enthusiasm for those 
whose blood they have inherited, and whose 
names they have nobly adorned. It is not 
necessary, and it is not at all my present 
purpose, to add to this special profuse dis- 



io €&e puritan spirit 

cussion. Let us look, rather, at the Puritan 
spirit as it has asserted itself at large, on an 
ampler area, in the broader ranges of general 
history. We may there see it more clearly, 
perhaps ; as one sees a mountain, in its 
majestic and harmonious outlines, most dis- 
tinctly from a distance, not from its base, or 
from the sides or shoulders of it ; — the Ober- 
land group, from the terrace at Berne ; the 
Graian or the Pennine Alps, from the streets 
of Turin, or from the cathedral roof at Milan. 
Our first question must naturally be : What 
are the elements vitally involved in the dis- 
elements of tinctive Puritan spirit, as that has hitherto and 

the Puritan 

spirit in general experience appeared in the world ? 

Let us disengage these, as far as we may, from 
individual traits, which are as various as the 
millionfold crinkles along a coast, and survey 
them impersonally, before we regard them in 
particular examples. 

The spirit, as such, is not to be identified, of 
course, with any specific form either of 
doctrine or of worship, since it has appeared 
in connection with many, and has continued 
positive and permanent, while they have been 
widely and variously changed. The elements 



IV 



€f)e puritan spirit u 

involved in it are essentially moral, and 
earnestly practical, not theoretical ; and they 
are not difficult to ascertain and exhibit. 

The first is, I think we all shall agree, an i. An intense 

conviction of 

intense conviction of that which is apprehended *pg* hended 
as truth, with a consequent desire to maintain 
and extend it, and to bring all others, if 
possible, to affirm it. 

It by no means follows, you observe, that 
what is thus apprehended is truth, or is truth 
in harmonious and complete exhibition. No 
man, or body of men, according to our con- 
ception of things, is infallible on all subjects, 
or even on any, history being witness ; and 
very different forms of thought have at different 
times drawn to themselves the intense con- 
viction of human minds. It is the vigor, the 
moral energy of the conviction, which belongs 
to and which characterizes the Puritan spirit. 

Usually, this concerns supremely moral or 
religious propositions, rather than those which 
are political or philosophical ; though the 
latter may no doubt take occasional supremacy, 
as being involved in the others, or closely 
associated with them. Usually, too, it is 
founded, you will notice, on personal inquiry, 



i2 Cl)e puritan Spirit 



individual reflection, not on traditional impres- 
sions or external instruction ; while, very largely, 
it takes its aggressive and resolute force from 
personal experience, which seems, of course, 
to give an assurance that nothing else can. 
So the conviction is sharp-set and energetic, 
however narrow it may seem to those who do 
not share it. It may be wanting, as not 
unfrequently it has been, in breadth of view, 
and in clearness of perspective ; but it is never 
wavering or weak. It is naturally uncom- 
promising toward what contradicts it ; and it 
perhaps too easily makes one impatient of 
divergence in opinion, liable to suspect moral 
error in those not mentally agreeing with it. 
It is not particularly catholic in temper, and 
not usually conciliatory in forms of expression ; 
and to those who do not have definite, urgent, 
and sovereign opinions, it may easily seem 
imperious and harsh, repellently arrogant. 

But it becomes, by reason of its strength, a 
very positive power in the world of thought. 
It leads one to risk much on his convictions, to 
be utterly bold on their behalf, and to be ready 
to stand or fall with them before God and the 
universe : and in this is always dignity and 



€fje puritan spirit 13 

power. It is in exact antithesis — this distinc- 
tive Puritan spirit — to that indifferent, pyrrhonic 
temper, always popular in the world, and never 
more so than in our time, which thinks one 
opinion about as good as another — this more 
probable, perhaps, that more doubtful, but no 
one of all absolutely and certainly true. 

An accomplished friend of mine, somewhat 
critical perhaps of accepted opinions, once 
heard a sermon from an eminent divine of 
New England, on the character of Judas, in 
which the sordid and treacherous meanness of 
the apostate apostle, ripening into stupendous 
crime, was traced with a touch as delicate and 
vivid as the severity was unsparing. As he 
passed from the church, a friend said to him, 
" What a terrific discourse that was ! so true to 
the record, so true to life, and so startlingly 
true to the secrets of sin ! " " Yes," was his 
reply, " it was certainly a tremendous summing 
up against Judas ; but some things, I think, 
might fairly be said upon the other side." 
That is always the temper which is restless in 
conclusions, which doubts whatever it does not 
see, and which can accept no result of thought 
as beyond the reach of further revision. You 



1 4 Cl)e puritan spirit 

may like it, perhaps. For the evening, at least, 
I shall open no quarrel with it. I only point 
out the fact that it is as alien from the Puritan 
temper as is that of the careless observer of 
society from that of the heroic reformer ; as 
was that of Erasmus from that of John Huss ; 
as that of the " free lance," in the Middle Ages, 
bold and skillful, but ready to follow any banner 
which paid him best, from that of the perhaps 
mistaken but always chivalric soldier or knight, 
who would fight to the death for church and 
crown. 

On its intellectual side, this fairly exhibits 
the Puritan spirit. 

But also, with this intellectual temper, is 

associated characteristically, in this spirit, an 

* S te ?he intense sense of the authority of righteous- 
authority of .... . 

righteousness n ess, as constituting the imperative law for 
mankind, only in obedience to which is it pos- 
sible to realize true human nobleness and 
beauty. 

Here again, you observe, it by no means 
follows that that which is conceived to be right- 
eous is so in fact, or is so fully. Men's moral 
judgment of particulars, in action or in habit, 
may be widely and diversely mistaken. It is 



2. An intense 



€&e puritan spirit 15 

apt to be variously shaped and shaded through 
the impressions of early instruction, of exter- 
nal influences, of transmitted prepossessions, 
not unfrequently through the force of an un- 
suspected self-interest turning the delicate 
indicating needle from the true North ; so that 
courses of action seeming right to some shall 
be to others ethically offensive, and even the 
crimes of one state of society shall appear 
virtues to another. Thus, in our time, slavery 
has been assailed and defended, with equal 
vehemence and with equal tenacity, by those in 
whom was the Puritan spirit ; as in other days 
the divine right of kings, and the duty of 
regicide, have alike found supporters among 
them. No special code of formal regulations 
belongs, distinctively, to the Puritan spirit. 

But that which is peculiar to it is the convic- 
tion of a law of righteousness, the omnipres- 
ent, superlative, and unyielding law in the 
universe of mind, before which self-interest 
must be silent, against which the power of 
human passion vainly breaks, in conformity 
with which human laws have justification and 
vindication, and find their only secure support. 
Theoretically, of course, Cicero had recognized 



1 6 Cf)e puritan cfepirit 

this in what Lactantius called the " almost 
divine words " of the Republic ; as did Seneca 
afterward ; as Plato had done before ; and as 
Sophocles had put into the lips of the doomed 
Antigone the recognition of the " unwritten 
and immovable laws of the gods," eternally 
vital, which no mortal may justly transgress. 
But the peculiarity of the Puritan spirit is that 
it affirms this with tremendous emphasis, un- 
dertakes to test everything by it, and is de- 
termined to force it into practice, whatever 
happens. The Puritan is constitutionally, 
always, the incarnate conscience of his time; 
and, as one of our present illustrious guests 
said, in substance, fifty years ago this week, in 
an Address which was an Oration, in the city of 
New York, " It was Conscience in the Pilgrims 
which brought them to these shores ; inspiring 
a courage, confirming a resolution, and accom- 
plishing an enterprise, for the parallel of which 
men vainly search the records of the world." 1 
This temper brings one, as a matter of 
course, into elemental conflict with those who 
hold that the law of the state, or the custom 

1 An Address delivered before the New England Society in the city of 
New York, December 23, 1839, by Robert C. Winthrop. Boston : Perkins 
& Marvin. 1840. 



€lje puritan spirit 17 

of society, is the ultimate rule ; which is 
simply equivalent to saying that there is 
nothing higher in the universe than " the 
low-hung sky of Time ; " with those who 
affirm, too, that what is for a man's profit and 
pleasure is always permissible, certainly if 
involving no damage to others ; with those 
who hold that any ideal law is a matter of 
poetic fancy and ethereal illusion, and that 
practical maxims, like those of Poor Richard, 
derived from economic experience, are the true 
guide of human life. Neither of these ethical 
tendencies has anything whatever of the 
Puritan in it. 

But when one affirms an invisible law, — 
" vera lex!' as Cicero says, " recta ratio, . . . 
diffusa in omnes, cons tans, sempiternal x — 

1 " Est quidem vera lex, recta ratio, naturae congruens, diffusa in 
omnes, constans, sempiterna; quae vocet ad officium jubendo, vetando a 
fraude deterreat; quae tamen neque probos frustra jubet aut vetat, nee 
improbos jubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi nee obrogari fas est, 
neque derogari ex hac aliquid licet, neque tota abrogari potest : nee vero 
aut per senatum, aut per populum solvi hac lege possumus : neque est 
quaerendus explanator, aut interpres ejus alius : nee erit alia lex Romae, 
alia Athenis ; alia nunc, alia posthac ; sed et omnes gentes et omni tempore 
una lex, et sempiterna, et immutabilis continebit : unusque erit communis 
quasi magister et imperator omnium Deus, ille legis hujus inventor, discep- 
tator, lator ; cui qui non parebit, ipse se fugiet, ac naturam hominis asperna- 
tus, hoc ipso luet maximas pcenas, etiam si cetera supplicia, quae putantur, 
effugerit." De Repub. iii : 17. 

Lactantius' words are : " Dei lex, quam Marcus Tullius in libro de Rep. 
tertio paene divina voce depinxit." Div. Inst, vi : 8. 



1 8 €f>e puritan spirit 

above all human rule and custom, which he is 
eternally bound to obey, and whose sublime 
precepts he must accomplish, whatever the cost 
and whatever the result — there is the essential 
Puritan spirit. The man may be absurdly 
mistaken in particulars ; the circumstances and 
the drapery of his life may be sumptuous or 
mean ; he may be on the throne, or brooding 
alone in sterile fields ; his name among men 
may be anything you please : but his moral 
temper is always the same, whether in heathen- 
dom or in Christendom, in the middle age or 
in this age, in Massachusetts or beyond the 
Pacific. 

That moral temper associates him with many 
from whom in other things he stands widely 
apart. You see it in Stuart Mill as clearly, 
perhaps, as in any old stoic ; in Emerson, 
and in Whittier, whose recent birthday the 
country honored, as in any early New England 
divine. The law of righteousness, dimly dis- 
cerned, perhaps, but affirmed without debate 
and applied without flinching — that is the 
element. Goethe spoke to Eckermann, you 
may remember, of his dislike for a too 
tender conscience, which tended, he thought, 



€l)e puritan spirit 19 

to fix men's moral view on themselves, and to 
make them hypochondriacal ; and elsewhere, 
in a passage of his autobiography, he con- 
gratulates himself on having left behind a cer- 
tain anguish of conscience, with the altar and 
the Church, to all which he felt himself 
thenceforth superior. But Goethe, with all 
his many-sided genius and his surpassing 
accomplishments, was as little of a Puritan — 
with the possible exception of Alcibiades — 
as ever set foot upon the planet. 

It is noticeable, too, that with this intense 
sense of the authority of righteousness, comes A rofound 
naturally, though not universally, a profound God'Trighteoub 
assurance of a Personal Power at the head of 
the universe, who is working for righteousness, 
and who means to make it triumphant in the 
world. 

Of course this is the Biblical idea, on which 
all promises and provisions of the Scripture 
are based and set. But it is by no means 
universally accepted, even among those who 
daily walk beneath the light of the Scripture. 
Many feel, practically, in our time as in other 
times, that substantially the present course of 
things is to go on to the end — industry, 



20 €J)e puritan spirit 

commerce, war, crime, pleasure, punishment, 
following each other in ceaseless succession ; 
sometimes right uppermost, and sometimes 
wrong, even as now ; that education will be 
widened, inventions multiplied, wealth in- 
creased, but that the old tangle of experience 
will remain, with the same confused elements 
contending in it, till the completion of the 
history of mankind. 

The Puritan is he who looks for the absolute 
final dominion of righteousness on the earth, 
without which society never can be perfect, 
through which alone true welfare can be 
reached, in which the earth shall be illumined 
and morally crowned ; who looks for this 
because he believes there is always One, at the 
head of the Universe, intent on this end and 
sure to achieve it. The moral argument for 
God is essentially supreme with such a man. 
The ethical quality is to him the highest in the 
Most High. To hear God described as " the 
sum of natural forces," or as a being of power 
and skill, with no sovereignty of an eternal 
righteousness in him, is to such an one the 
final offence against reason and conscience. 
God is sublime to him, not so much because 



Cfje puritan spirit 21 

braiding the light, or launching the lightnings, 
or bending the heavens in an arch of circles 
which no telescope can search, as because he 
accepts righteousness as the law ; and his 
government is august because he will make 
this universal. Here is the key to the Puritan 
theology, wherever that has appeared in 
history. Here is the dominant note in the 
personal Puritan life. It is a determining fact 
in character. It associates souls in a mystic 
and wide communion. Men may call such 
a man Quaker or Catholic, Cavalier or Round- 
head, heretic or believer : he is as truly of the 
spiritual Puritan stock as if he had fought with 
Cromwell at Naseby, had faced the flame with 
the cheerfulness of Ridley, or had worshiped 
in the earliest and rudest huts of the Plymouth 
colony. 

I have specified three elements in the Puritan j^a p^und 
spirit. A fourth one must be added : a pro- 
found sense of the invisible world as the 
immortal realm of righteousness, and of the 
dignity of the nature of man, who is con- 
stitutionally related to that, and to the 
righteousness which is sovereign in it. 

The dignity of man's nature, I say, you 



22 Cfje puritan spirit 

observe. This is by no means to be con- 
founded with any high estimate put on his 
character. On the other hand, the higher 
one's estimate of his nature, in its inborn 
relationship to righteousness and to God, the 
sharper will be, usually, his criticism of himself, 
and perhaps his moral condemnation of others. 
It is the man of Epicurean life and thought 
who thinks too lightly or too highly of himself, 
having no noble ethical standard by which to 
try his moral life. The austere judgment of 
one who reveres God as righteous will strike 
with sharpest and hardest stroke on all con- 
scious folly and sin ; and despair is apt to be 
nearer to such an one than any self-exaltation. 
But the estimate of the human personality is 
wonderfully different in the Epicurean, to 
whom life is only a holiday-game, and in the 
Puritan, to whom it is an arena for sublime 
struggle and heroic achievement in the service 
of righteousness. " Bury me with my dogs" 
is a saying which has sometimes been attributed 
to Frederick the Great, as he drew toward 
death. It might have been said by him, though 
probably it was not. To the Puritan the very 
body is sacred, as having been the shrine of 



€f>e puritan spirit 23 

that personal soul which is allied with the 
immensities. In himself, as in others, he rec- 
ognizes profoundly supernal relations. 

Man is to him naturally a great person ; with 
great powers for discerning the truth, and serv- 
ing the cause of a divine justice ; on a solemn 
and divine errand in the world ; constitution- 
ally affined to invisible spheres, and to Him 
who is supreme amid them ; not far beneath 
the level of celestial intelligences ; to whom it 
is natural that there should come divine teach- 
ings, and even present divine impulses ; for 
whom no miraculous intervention is too amaz- 
ing to be believed ; before whom arises the 
great White Throne. Differences of human 
condition are little. The question of more or 
less culture, of more or less success in the 
world, is of no account to one who looks thus 
on the nature of man. The personal soul, in 
castle or cabin, in palaces or in chains — that is 
the supreme thing on the planet ; for which, 
indeed, the planet was builded and is main- 
tained ; by the presence of which the earth 
becomes a vital and a significant part of the 
universe which has God in it, with ranks and 
orders of intelligent spirits. For this the Cross 



24 €f)e puritan Spirit 

was set, under shadowed heavens, on the 
amazed and quaking earth. Above this are 
opened the gates of light. 

This honor for the soul, as related to God 
and to the holy and bright Immensity, is as 
essentially as anything else a characteristic 
force and element in the Puritan spirit. Mas- 
son gives a perfect illustration of it when, in 
his Life of Milton, he describes the great poet, 
at his graduation from Cambridge in 1632, two 
years after some of our ancestors reached these 
shores, as characterized by a solemn and even 
an austere demeanor of mind, connected with 
which, he says, was a haughty yet not immod- 
est self-esteem, since he recognized himself as 
an endowed servant of the Most High, and was 
accordingly daringly resentful of any interfer- 
ence, from whatever quarter, with his complete 
intellectual freedom. That was precisely the 
Puritan spirit. Even the portraits of Puritans 
show it, whether by Van Dyke on the other 
side of the ocean, or by Copley on this. Men 
have thought of this temper as wholly subdued, 
if not overwhelmed, in its unquestioning rever- 
ence toward God. His authority it has not 
doubted, because his character has arisen before 



€J>e puritan spirit 25 

it, glorious in holiness. But it has been the 
most imperious temper of the world in its as- 
sertion of man's independence, as responsible 
to God; as already by nature what he would 
make it morally, by operations of grace, his 
son and heir. This is the temper in which the 
Scriptures have been studied ; in which preach- 
ing has become the great function which it has 
been in the Puritan congregations — whether 
performed in the Genevan gown, or in the sur- 
plice, or in neither. This is the temper in 
which learning has been cultivated with inces- 
sant assiduity ; in which Harvard College was 
established, in the midst of extreme poverty 
and weakness, to become the vast and opulent 
university in which to-day the land rejoices, 
and from which it takes a beautiful renown. 
Such enthusiasm for learning never will cease 
while the Puritan conception of man's nature 
continues. 

We have noticed some principal elements in v 

Deficiencies 

the Puritan spirit. Let us observe, and with ™ the puri- 
equal care, some grave and palpable deficien- 
cies in it. To it belong, not unnaturally, the 
defects of its virtues, and the roughnesses of 
its strength. It is not easy for any man, or 



tan Spirit 



26 €f)c puritan spirit 

any body of men, to have the armor of right- 
eousness equally and fully on the right hand 
and on the left. And the evident deficiencies 
or faults which appear in connection with the 
Puritan temper are such as to excite, among 
multitudes of men, a very vigorous dissent and 
dislike. They are often assailed with the sharp- 
est and most contemptuous ridicule, are some- 
times encountered with the fiercest animosity. 
JerSTntwngs O ne °f tnem > certainly, is a want of interest 
in things esthetic ; in the products of fancy, 
of artistic genius, of dexterous skill, in what 
has it for its office to add the ornament of 
beauty to life. It is not by accident that 
the Puritan spirit has been often iconoclastic, 
shattering statues or burning them into lime, 
melting in furnaces the rich and precious 
monumental brasses, shivering the loveliest 
stained glass as if it were frost-work on the 
window, cutting pictures in pieces, and once, 
at least, offering twenty thousand pounds, as 
it is said in my family tradition that a Puritan 
did to Oliver Cromwell, for permission to burn 
the pile of York Minster. 

Not for the Puritan, in his reserved and 
haughty consciousness of supernal relations, is 



€fte puritan spirit 27 

the dainty sumptuousness of color, the sym- 
metric grace of molded marbles, the rhythmic 
reach and stately height of noble architecture, 
the pathos and the mystery of music. His 
spirit has been too intense, his mind too 
heavily charged with urgent and imperial 
themes, his will too set and strenuous for 
achievement in the world-battle to which he 
feels himself engaged, to allow him to pause 
upon things like these. They have seemed to 
him glittering and deceptive gauds ; tinseled 
shows, hiding the sun ; products of the 
pleasure-loving part of man's nature, not min- 
istering to truth and righteousness, and to 
man's supreme welfare. He has therefore 
dashed them before him as frail things, of no 
moral worth, and liable even to be dangerously 
alluring. 

He has not remembered that to some minds 
a relish for what is lovely in fancy and in art 
is as native as color to the violet, fragrance to 
the rose, or song to the bird ; that God's own 
mind must eternally teem with beauty, since 
he lines with it the tiny sea-shell, and tints the 
fish, and tones the hidden fibres of trees, and 
flashes it on breast and crest of flying birds, 



28 €&e puritan spirit 

and breaks the tumbling avalanche into 
myriads of feathery crystals, and builds the 
skies in a splendor, to a rhythm, which no 
thought can match. It has been a narrow- 
ness, though a narrowness that has had 
depth in it, and that has not been merely 
superficial and noisy. And it has been a 
narrowness for which the Puritan has suf- 
fered, in the diminution of his influence in 
the world, and in the darkening of his fame, 
more than others for conspicuous crimes. I 
recognize the fact, and have no contention to 
make against it, though I can not but regret 
it with all my heart. 
mboTSncies ^ * s obvious, too, that with this disesteem of 
things esthetic has been often associated a 
foolish contempt for the minor elegancies of 
life, of letters, of personal manners, and of 
social equipment, with sometimes a positively 
dangerous disdain of the common innocent 
pleasures of life. 

Unquestionably, and for the same reason, — 
its intensity of conviction, its supreme devo- 
tion to what it conceives as the absolute right- 
eousness, — the typical historic Puritan spirit 
has had in it something harsh and rigid, 



€J)e puritan spirit 29 

repellent, indeed, and almost relentless, toward 
the minor refinements of thought and speech. 
It is too downright, and determinately insistent, 
to give sympathy to these. There have been, 
as there will be, signal exceptions ; elegant 
scholars, accomplished artists, noble gentlemen, 
to whom a delicate courtesy was an instinct ; 
but, constitutionally, the spirit which I am 
broadly describing does not specially care for 
what is charming, graceful, picturesque in 
society. The dainty humor, the choice epi- 
gram, the sparkling persiflage of the salon 
are not at all within its sphere. It is so 
essentially predetermined to great ideas, and 
majestical purposes, that these things appear 
to it slight, evanescent, of no real account. 
Its very wit is sharp, if not saturnine, has a 
gleaming edge, and is meant to serve practical 
uses, And toward the pleasant enjoyments of 
life it is apt to take an attitude almost cynical, 
in which there is both folly and peril. 

Not everything is true, we know, which has 
been said of it in this regard. Household 
pleasures have been familiar and delightful in 
Puritan families. The Thanksgiving festival, 
— a kind of secular Christmas, — now happily 



Zt\c puritan Spirit 



naturalized throughout the land, has been one 
of the products of the Puritan spirit, rising like 
a majestic date-palm from amid the gleaming 
ice of New England. But certainly its con- 
ception of life on the earth has always been 
that of a battle and a march, under watchful 
heavens, toward superlative issues, with great 
destinies involved. And so disdain of the 
soft and pleasant things in life has never been 
unnatural to it. It fears in them a subtle 
seduction from nobler aims, perhaps sometimes 
suspects this where it does not exist ; and for 
itself, it would be always girded and armed, and 
shod with swift sandals, for righteous strife. 

Of course there is much in this which, to 
the general feeling of the world, is wholly 
unlovely ; and there is much, it may not be 
denied, which involves a positive moral danger. 
For pleasure, so it be innocent in itself, is not 
a mere sedative or emollient to the spirit. It 
is absolutely re-creative, as the very word " rec- 
reation " implies. Within reasonable limits, 
it is that which keeps the moral temper sound 
and sweet, which refreshes the will when it is 
weary, and reinforces it for invigorated action, 
making the face of the sternest man to beam 



€fje puritan spirit 3 1 

and shine with a radiance from within. Any 
ascetic intolerance of true pleasure, or any 
habitual indifference to it, tends to moodiness, 
or even morbidness, of mind. It tends to 
self-isolation from a world whose playfulness 
and whose pleasantness are distrusted ; from a 
world which is regarded as one to be refused 
and conquered, not to be enjoyed. It has 
tended, indeed, sometimes at least, to worse 
effects still, to a wild and fierce license, coming 
in reaction from it, and as a final alternative 
to it. It is not monasticism alone which has 
shown these effects. There are passages in the 
history of Puritan families which almost luridly 
illustrate the same. The modern gay insolence 
of youth was of course never tolerated in the 
Puritan society, even when it took much milder 
forms than that which angered the ancient 
bears. But sometimes, also, the glad and 
comely pleasure of youth was too little re- 
garded, was too sternly repressed. The effort 
to expel nature with pitchforks is not often 
successful. One may, perhaps, cap a geyser 
with stone, but look out then for more formid- 
able jets ! And it is a fact which has philoso- 
phy in it, that the most reckless profligates 



32 €f>c puritan spirit 

whom our history has known have come, some- 
times, from the saintliest and the most scrupu- 
lous households. 
tin L a a tfsyl^h C y Another defect is still more vital : that 
minds toward the more delicate sensibilities of the 

soul, especially as they appear in minds dis- 
turbed, unsettled, and questioning, and in 
hearts reaching tenderly forth for stimulation 
or solace, there is often a lack of affectionate 
sympathy in the Puritan spirit. There is even 
sometimes a hard and oppressive intolerance 
toward such. 

Certain great ideas have authority for that 
spirit, and it feels and declares that they should 
have for all. The immutable laws of right- 
eousness must go on, though a million hearts 
are bruised before them. There is, not unfre- 
quently, among minds which are not of the 
finer and superior order, a prodigious confi- 
dence in purely logical processes, as availing 
to solve the highest problems which can be 
presented to human thought. Even the Cam- 
bridge 'Platonists, with their sympathizers at 
Oxford, were regarded in their time, and have 
been regarded since by the commoner minds, 
with a certain disfavor, though the honored 



€l)e puritan spirit 33 

name of Emmanuel College was above them. 
The spiritual intuition of truth, the sublime 
views of it which appeal immediately to a 
spirit in holy fellowship with God, are apt to 
command too little respect from the downright 
and practical Puritan mind. An inference, to 
that mind, is as certain as a vision. It sees no 
shading, and tolerates no internal hesitation. 
" Logic is logic. That 's what I say " — as in 
the wonderful " one-horse shay." 

There is at times, no doubt, something 
hard, imperious, dictatorial, in this spirit. It 
is not as sensitively gentle and responsive, as 
discerning and patient, toward diffident souls 
as was that of the Master. It repeats his 
denunciatory words toward the strong and the 
haughty, more easily than his affectionate 
ministry to the questioning and the sad. It 
catches the roll of the thunder from Sinai, and 
makes it reverberate over the centuries, more 
readily than it adapts itself to the loftier office 
of wiping all tears from every eye. 

One of the most striking modern instances 
of this spirit, among literary men, has been in 
Carlyle, who did not accept many Puritan doc- 
trines, but whose Scotch blood seethed with its 



34 €f)e puritan spirit 

temper in every microscopic globule ; and in 
whom sternness, rather than sweetness, was 
certainly the prevailing trait. Sarcastic jeers 
at human infirmity were oftener on his lips 
than words of compassionate sympathy with 
it. A nation, to him, was " of forty millions, 
mostly fools." And while multitudes of minds 
have been seized and stirred by his well-nigh 
prophetic words, as by almost no others spoken 
in our time, a sad soul, teased with question- 
ings, troubled and tremulous in anxious solici- 
tudes, crying like a child in the night for 
help, would hardly conceivably have gone to 
him. In a lonely grief any one of us would, 
I am sure, have appealed far sooner to men 
with not a tithe of his terrible genius. 

In more or less distinctness, we see the same 
thing widely in history. The Puritan temper is 
strong and stalwart. It grasps great themes, 
confronts great oppositions, and reckons with 
great issues ; but it is not essentially gentle, 
tolerant, sympathetic, tender, intent upon lead- 
ing men with delicate hand out of tangles of 
doubt, out of weakness and fear into spiritual 
tranquillity, out of sadness into peace. It is 
too affirmative to be wholly sympathetic ; too 



CJje puritan spirit 35 

surely related, in its intense consciousness, to 
the supreme circles of the universe, to regard 
as it ought the weary and timid and half- 
despondent. So multitudes of men resent 
and hate it. They scoff at and scout it, and 
would put it, if they could, in a perpetual 
pillory of history. 

Mrs. Stowe has touched this, again and 
again, with her unsurpassed delicacy and 
strength, in some of her sketches of New Eng- 
land life. Perhaps no one of us, in whose veins 
flows the blood of the early immigration, could 
go back to the start in his family history without 
finding examples. The sensitive minds, the 
minds in which the moral dominated the logi- 
cal, — the imaginative, and especially the femi- 
nine minds, — were often oppressed with terri- 
fic self-questionings, in the shade of the woods, 
in the comparative loneliness of life and its 
austere stillness under the solemn and silent 
stars, and in face-to-face view of the mystery 
of the future. An introverted thought started 
surmisings which it could not silence and 
could not expel ; and Satanic suggestions 
seemed sometimes impalpably to lurk amid 
the shifting and darkling shadows of un- 



36 €J)e puritan Spirit 

tracked woods. The cases were certainly 
not uncommon, in which no ministry, save of 
logical deductions from what were esteemed 
theological principia, was addressed to such 
minds ; in which, indeed, their suffering lasted, 
sometimes deepening into utter despondency, 
till cleared and dispersed in the supreme 
illumination of death. I do not hold the Puri- 
tan temper directly, or certainly universally, 
responsible for this ; but it has a defect in 
this direction which no fair mind will forget 
or conceal. 
vi But if such are its deficiencies, which we 

Magnificent - . . . _ i • i i 

qualities of may not hide, let us not forget that it has also 

the Puritan . . ~ ... . . 

spirit certain magnificent qualities and superlative 

traits, which surely we ought, as well, to 
recognize. In times of great trial, amid the 
tremendous emergencies of affairs, these are 
certain to appear. 

i. a masterful It has, for one thing:, a masterful sincerity. 
If any fineness of literary form is not a matter 
of importance to the Puritan, as it usually is 
not ; if he fails to appreciate the subtle charm 
of modulated sentences, the finished luster of 
choice aphorisms, or the iridescent interplay 
of humor, this splendid and powerful grace of 
sincerity belongs to his temper, and gives it 



sincerity 



€&e puritan spirit 37 

a dignity impossible otherwise. Men may 
charge him with sternness, and with being too 
little regardful of others ; but he is not apt to 
be temporizing in policy, ambiguous or diplo- 
matic in forms of expression. Naturally his 
spirit hates the stucco which would represent 
stone ; and while it will not be anxious, 
perhaps, to gild iron columns, or to crown 
them with acanthus leaves, it will insist on their 
being iron, and not a frame of painted wood. 

I do not think men can anywhere be found 
whose words have squared more absolutely 
with their convictions than did those of the 
Puritans of England toward king and prelate ; 
than have those of many on this side of the 
ocean, in whom was the original Puritan 
temper, who have set forth conclusions sure at 
once to be violently assailed. Sincerity, at 
least, has been in the utterance — such sincer- 
ity as Ruskin long ago eloquently expounded 
as a characteristic condition and element of all 
great art ; a sincerity which, as he says, " rules 
invention with a rod of iron ; which subdues 
all powers, impulses, imaginations, to the 
arbitrament of a merciless justice, and the 
obedience of an incorruptible verity." 



38 Cfje puritan Spirit 

It is a characteristic not of great art alone, 
but of all great life — this majestic sincerity, 
which means what it says ; which does not 
evade and does not equivocate ; which gives 
weight to words, simplicity and impressiveness 
to all forms of action ; and which makes the 
longest uncouth sentences that ever were 
heard from a Puritan pulpit reverberate with 
the tone of personal earnestness, as with music 
of deepest bells. The Puritan statesmanship 
is apt to be candid. The Puritan laws are sure 
to have penalties ; and if Puritan thought has 
the impulse and the power to wreak itself on 
expression in the true poetic form, it makes the 
poetry glowing and incandescent, shot through 
with the singular heat and splendor of an 
upright and fervent soul. For myself, I would 
rather there were less of elegance and more of 
sincerity in letters and in life, wherever the 
English tongue is spoken. If that is a con- 
summation not reached in our time, it will 
certainly not be because the dauntless Puritan 
temper has not distinctly assisted toward it. 
ideti majestic Still further, too, if fancy is not active in the 
Puritan on lighter themes, he has before his 
mind a majestic ideal, of a universal kingdom 



€lje puritan spirit 39 

of righteousness and truth, which is to include 
all human society, and to shape that society 
by its supreme laws. 

This is essentially the grandest ideal ever 
recognized in the world ; with which no other 
may be compared. The aim of the Roman 
Empire, of the Napoleonic, of the Russian, 
or of the British, has been simply limited and 
gross in comparison. It passes all other 
schemes of mankind, as opalescent mountain 
masses, seen from some fortunate coigne of 
vantage, surpass the cabins and villages about 
them. It has appealed, with a supreme 
summons, to greatest spirits. A refrain from 
it was in Dante's song, and in Milton's. It 
is older far than the vision of John in the 
Apocalypse. A light from it gleamed upon 
the Hebrew economy. It was this, and 
nothing else, which the early colonists hoped 
and strove to realize here, in their narrow and 
stern surroundings. It is this which their 
descendants are striving to-day to further and 
assist, in their costly and cosmical missionary 
work. 

It is impressive to see how, in the early 
New England, when the distances were great, 



40 €fje puritan cfepitit 

the surfaces desolate, when churches were 
bleak and services austere, and when the 
Bay psalm-book marked the only troubadour 
period in the unadorned annals, this vision of 
the future, in its superlative moral beauty, 
was the constant poem both of house and of 
church. Wheresoever it appeared, and left 
its luster on the life in the wilderness, it 
appeared, as it still appears to us looking back, 
an illuminating ideal, impelling to the noblest 
endeavors, lifting the spirit toward highest 
levels, rounding the confused and noisy 
history of the time and of the world with " a 
sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs and harping 
symphonies." No other fact is more charac- 
teristic of the Puritan spirit, and none, I think, 
is more significant or more impressive in any 
exhibition of human temper. 
3 . a superb and It is certainly to be said, too, that if the 

shining courage 

Puritan spirit is not naturally strong on the 
side of moral tenderness, it has a superb and 
shining courage, as well as a capacity for 
tremendous enthusiasm, and for a self-devotion 
conspicuous and complete. It is not afraid 
of what man can do, so long as it feels that 
God and his righteousness are on its side. 



Cfje puritan Spirit 41 

It has been frankly and gladly ready to face 
not only the fierce charge of cavaliers, but 
loneliness, exile, the sea and the wilderness, 
the unknown perils of a soil and an air which 
civilization had not tried, the cruel craft of 
savage enemies. It has gone out from happy 
homes for this, and from lovely surroundings, 
and has not flinched before the hazard and 
life-long loss, any more than it had flinched 
before the frowning face of kings. 

It has in it a fortitude which is nobler than 
bravery, as the current of the stream is might- 
ier in momentum than the sparkles which flash 
and foam on its surface. Such fortitude belongs 
to the convictions behind it. It is essentially 
involved in the assurance of God, of an imper- 
ative righteousness, of the universe as one in 
which the moral order is supreme, and of the 
immortality in which that order shall be regnant 
and eternal. So it can not give way, any more 
than the rock can before arrows or winds or 
the leap of wild beasts. Whoever has a true 
Puritan behind him, in any stress of contention 
and struggle, may know that there is one on 
whose succor and support he can steadfastly 
depend. A law of nature is scarcely less muta- 



stitutions 



42 €J)e puritan spirit 

ble. The poise of the planet is hardly more 
constant. " The Guard may die, but it never 
surrenders." 

disre g S?d m o p f h 1S- ^ nc * y et ^ urtner : if tms spirit has often too 
little regard for perplexed and suffering indi- 
vidual souls, it has also a triumphant disregard 
of institutions, however mighty, however an- 
cient, if they are not characterized by what it 
apprehends as a divine righteousness, and are 
not ready to submit to and to serve that. 

It is this which has brought this imperative 
temper constantly into conflict with such insti- 
tutions, and has made it seem often only ruth- 
lessly destructive. It has in fact been tearing 
down, to build up on what it could not but hold 
to be nobler lines. Church hierarchies, state 
aristocracies, institutions of royalty or of em- 
pire, have been nothing to it, except as related 
to the supreme ends of God's righteous king- 
dom. Miters and scepters have been paltry 
baubles before the intensity of its convictions. 
Pontifical thrones have seemed mere offensive 
obstructions in its path, to be swept away as 
the cannon fire sweeps away earthworks and 
abattis before the shouting onset of an army. 
Even majority-votes, which to the American 
mind seem to be specially hedged with divin- 



€f)e puritan spirit 43 

ity, are hay and stubble before its intensity. 
Individual responsibility is its fundamental law. 
It expects to continue in the minority, till the 
earth has been renewed to the righteousness of 
God ; and it is ready to wait for vindication and 
victory in the ages of larger light to come. 
It is essentially an innovating and a pioneer 
temper, aggressive and resolute for whatever 
may lift society forward, toward superior levels, 
more generous times. As it formerly met pain 
and persecution, without complaint and without 
reserve, so now it meets an adverse vote. As 
it denounced prelates aforetime, and set its 
foot on the neck of kings, so now it attacks 
any interest of society, or any organized insti- 
tution, which seems to it opposed to righteous- 
ness ; and it is never to be satisfied till such an 
institution has been overthrown. " First pure, 
then peaceable," is its favorite maxim ; and the 
terrible strength of an intense purpose is 
always behind its moral attack. 

It needs the guidance of highest wisdom, 
and may well offer the considerate prayer of 
the Scotch divine, " Be pleased, O Lord, to 
guide us aright : for thou knowest that, 
whether we be right or wrong, we be very 



44 €fjc puritan spirit 

determined." But no man can make or face 
an issue with this Puritan spirit without doing 
well to count beforehand the cost. I see the 
danger involved at this point ; but I see, as 
well, the temper which has rectified a thousand 
intrenched and haughty abuses, and has made 
the world far lovelier to live in ; and I will not 
forget the lowly graves from which it has 
sprung, when enjoying the harvest of our more 
free and fruitful society. 
vis^ e of Cl Sngs Yet one thing more. If the Puritan spirit is 

celestial . . . r . - . 

comparatively careless of pleasant things on 
earth, and is apt to fear them as too dangerous 
allurements, it has the clearest and surest vision 
of things celestial, and draws from them solace 
and strength, and high inspiration. 

It is not a temper which works for wages. 
Men have heaped all manner of scorn upon it 
for maintaining, here and there, that a man 
should be willing to be damned in order to be 
saved. I admit the justice of much which has 
been said. No test of that unscriptural sort, 
fabricated by metaphysical logic, ought ever to 
be presented ; and this one is offensive in 
many special ways. It is not even harmless, 
as the man thought the end of the thermome- 



€tje puritan spirit 45 

ter might be, which he had bitten off and 
swallowed when it was testing his temperature, 
though he could not perceive that it was doing 
him any good. A test like this famous one 
dishonors God, by assuming that he can be 
willing to condemn one who seeks to turn in 
penitence to him ; and it confuses and bewilders 
the mind which is reaching after him in the 
person of his Son. It is justly repulsive to 
modern thought, and it never was favored by 
any large number of even the exacting Puritan 
divines. But it must be remembered, in abso- 
lute justice, that it represented precisely the 
state and attitude of mind in those who first 
proposed it as a question ; and that never until 
one does not care what may happen, in this 
world or the next, so long as he does right, is 
he finally and utterly free of the Universe, with 
all his powers in perfect poise and grandest 
play. If righteousness required it, and the 
glory of God under the gospel, they who 
offered this test were willing to face infernal 
fires ; and they felt that others should be so 
too. Their primary error undoubtedly was in 
transferring a transcendent, an almost superhu- 
man attitude of mind, to the beginnings of 



46 €i)e puritan spirit 

Christian experience ; in requiring from the 
babe in Christ what might possibly, at least in 
exceptional cases, have been accepted by the 
sublimely impassioned missionary or martyr. 
But while such absolute submission to God 
has been encouraged, and been even required, 
the Puritan thought has always been fixed on 
the supreme and celestial results of a divine 
life upon the earth, and has kept before it the 
radiant consummation of the eternal plan of the 
Most High. The Apocalypse has been to it 
the favorite book of all the Scriptures. The 
sunset-splendor has been no more evident to 
the physical eye than the Heavenly City has 
been to the heart. The Cross of Christ has 
been interpreted by its relation to those issues 
of life beyond all compass of human thought ; 
and the mission of the Comforter has been felt 
to be to bring an earnest of wisdom and love, 
of spiritual peace and of holy power, only 
fully attainable in the illustrious sphere of the 
immortals : as if blossoming branches had been 
flung from over the walls of paradise ; as if 
fragrant odors had secretly stolen between the 
gates. The earth itself has become a sacred 
place to men, with this high expectation arch- 



€f>e puritan spirit 47 

ing its bow above the household, turning dark- 
ness to day in the dreariest life, and lighting 
the hills and bathing the sandy or rocky 
shores as in the up-spring of the immortal 
morning ! The waste and the wood have been 
to such only the wilderness which men were 
taking, as Lady Arbella Johnson was said 
to have taken New England, on the way to 
heaven. Over the rudest letters and life of the 
early colonies brooded this ethereal splendor. 
Their very funeral hymns throbbed with the 
impulse of the great expectation. The living 
Puritan, like the dying Stephen, not unfre- 
quently saw the heavens opened, and the Son 
of man standing on the right hand of God ; 
and his face, too, was to those around him " as 
the face of an angel." 

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have spoken 
frankly, with too great slightness and rapidity SpiRIT CosMI ' 
of treatment, but with such a treatment as the 
circumstances of preparation have allowed me, 
of the elements involved in the Puritan spirit, 
as that has appeared not here alone, but at 
large in history ; of its deficiencies, or positive 
faults, which even its admirers have to recog- 
nize; and of the sovereign qualities and traits 



VII 

The Puritan 



48 €fje puritan spirit 

which it also exhibits, and exhibits with most 
commanding force in critical times, and in 
the front of great emergency. It can not be 
needful, then, to argue that this temper has 
not been local or provincial, but in the truest 
sense cosmical ; not limited to any one period 
in history, but common to all, and sometimes 
appearing most remarkably in those that were 
most unfriendly to it. It is as old as history ; 
and it always has shown itself with clearest 
manifestation in those of noblest nature and 
power, who have done the most memorable 
work for the world. Men have made kings 
out of rubbish, and statesmen, so called, out 
of pedants and rogues. They have tried, at 
any rate, to make scholars out of those too 
lazy to work, soldiers out of padded uniforms, 
philanthropists out of cranks. But it takes 
a strong man, and a sound one, to be devel- 
oped into a Puritan ; as men forge cannon out 
of grim metal, and do not fashion them of 
papier-mache. 

Puritanism has its sources and its securities 
in the supreme elements of human nature ; 
in the discerning and imperative conscience, 
which affirms right as the ultimate law in the 






Cfte puritan spirit 49 

universe of mind ; in the intuitive reason, 
which declares the certitude of invisible truth ; 
in that divine side of the soul which is in 
direct correspondence with its Author, and 
which sees the eternal justice and might on the 
field of human combat, more clearly than in 
any roll of the earthquake, or any far-shining 
figures of the stars. It has its strength in 
that commanding will-power which is ready for 
effort, endurance, consecration, which finds 
opposition an incentive to achievement, and 
before which resistant forces or circumstances, 
whatever they may be, have got either to bend 
or to break. In these great powers the 
Puritan spirit finds always its roots and 
reinforcements. And, therefore, wherever 
these have been shown, it has appeared ; 
wherever these are to be shown hereafter, it 
will appear, till the earth and the heavens shall 
be no more. 

Moses was a Puritan, — in fact, the sublime ^intheoid 
exemplar and type of the Puritan spirit ; who 
could not speak in the phrase of courts, and 
who knew that he could not ; but to whom 
Pharaoh, against God, with whatever chariots 
and horsemen and rock-built temples, was no 



Testament 



50 €J)e puritan spirit 

more than a temporary bulrush of the Nile 
against atmospheres and suns ; to whom the 
law of righteousness, the kingdom of the 
Holiest, the divine intervention for the guidance 
of his people, were as fleecy clouds, inlaid with 
fire, moving before him to lead the way and 
burnish the stern and rocky path ; who was 
just as strong against popular rebellion as he 
had been against imperial threat ; who bowed 
submissively to that divine will which sent him 
to die alone upon Nebo, and whom God 
buried in that austere and lonely funeral, the 
most majestic of time. It has been by reason 
of his indomitable Puritan temper, touched 
of God, that Moses has towered in colossal 
proportions, before all generations; so that, as 
Theodore Parker said of him, " His name is 
plowed into the history of the world, and his 
influence never can die." 

Hezekiah was a Puritan, no one can doubt, 
whatever temporary weaknesses he showed : who 
reconsecrated the defiled temple ; who swept 
away, with besom of fire, the lovely high places 
in which lust was taking on it the semblance and 
the sanctions of worship ; who broke in pieces 
the brazen serpent, in the most daring and 



€t>e puritan spirit 5 1 

splendid iconoclasm which the world has seen, 
calling it in contempt " Nehushtan " — a piece 
of brass. 

Daniel was a Puritan, as well as a statesman 
and a seer : in the face of presidents, princes, 
and the king, when the decree had gone forth 
against prayer, before watchful eyes, and with 
the fierceness of lions near, going into his 
chamber, with its windows opened toward 
Jerusalem, and three times a day kneeling, 
praying, and giving thanks, "as he did afore- 
time." 

Jeremiah was a Puritan : with rough raiment, 
ascetic habit, hated by people, priests, and 
kings, flung into prison, eating bread of 
affliction, and with tears for his drink, yet 
standing against wickedness like a brazen wall ; 
with a faith unfailing buying the field on 
which the invading host was encamped, to 
demonstrate his certainty that again it should 
be possessed by Israel ; his life a long martyr- 
dom, his death, perhaps, a furious murder ; yet 
bearing witness always, without impatience, 
but with no bated breath, to the truth of the 
Most High. One does not wonder that so 
many of the devout among our own Puritans 



52 Cfte puritan Spirit 

sought a chrism of his majestic spirit, in 
naming after him their precious firstborn. 

In fact, to state it in a word, the whole 
Old Testament is vital and commanding with 
the examples of the Puritan spirit. It is not 
here and there, alone ; it breaks to light at 
multitudinous points, as the sunshine through 
vapors, as the silver-gleams through all rifts 
of the rock in the wealthy mine. It was 
this which made the venerable Testament 
so dear to our fathers, and so familiar. We 
read it, perhaps, with daintier and reluctant 
eyes. But they, with their more virile tem- 
per, their experience of hardship, in their 
secluded homes in the wilderness, saw in the 
ancient Testament not history only, theology, 
or praise, but the glory of man reflecting and 
celebrating the glory of God. It was a Script- 
ure in life which smote and stirred their strong 
emotion. Not merely as to Deborah under 
the palm-tree, or to Ezekiel by the river of 
Chebar, was the majesty of the Eternal mani- 
fest to them. The whole Hebrew economy 
bore its radiance, and declared its effect ; an 
economy stern, sublime, working for freedom 
because binding to God ; training men to be 



€fje puritan spirit 53 

careless of the world and its lusts, that they 
might be champions for the kingdom unseen. 
This was the lambent cloud of glory which 
filled all Puritan temples when the ancient 
Scriptures were opened within them. This 
made a presence-chamber of the Infinite in 
each Puritan home. 

We may not say that the Master was a TeIt n a iSnt New 
Puritan, any more than we may apply to him 
any other of the special and divisional names 
known among men, his spirit being wholly 
sublimed and complete in perfect wisdom and 
perfect love. But this energetic and mag- 
nificent element was certainly in him, as shown 
by his attitude toward Pharisees and rulers, 
by his magisterial declarations of truth, and 
his terrific predictions of the judgment to 
come. The Puritan has never found anything 
hostile in the temper of Christ, though he 
might sometimes have been attuned by that 
temper to a more benignant and winning 
grace. 

In John the same strong element appears, 
with all his temper of mystical love, and that 
lofty spiritual intuition of truth which has 
made his Gospel a source of perpetual wonder 



54 Cfje puritan spirit 

and delight to all sympathetic and lofty minds. 
His first Epistle is alive with its power ; 
and it was an unswerving Puritan hand which 
traced the terrible crash of conflict in which 
righteousness conquers, and empires go down, 
till out of heaven descends in triumph the city 
of God. 

Paul was a Puritan, par eminence, in his view 
of truth and in his practical temper, in his 
hardihood of will and his vehement affirma- 
tions, and in his magnetic readiness for battle, 
on behalf of the convictions at which the Greek 
laughed and the Jew was enraged. Wherever 
this spirit has appeared in the world, since his 
head fell on the Ostian road, it has turned 
instinctively to his Epistles for instruction and 
incitement. His spirit has spoken in all the 
words which have smitten like cannon-shot 
upon powerful abuses. 
Histo^ ecular Outside, altogether, of the Biblical history, 
such examples appear. Men speak sometimes 
as if this spirit had been peculiar, or at least 
most familiar, to those of the Hebrew times 
and training, or, in modern years, to those, 
perhaps, of the English stock. Not at all. It 
belongs, as I have said, to the strong forces 



€f>e puritan spirit 55 

of human nature, and has appeared, therefore, 
wherever these have vitally emerged ; among 
those of Hellenic or Romanic lineage, of 
Gothic or of Celtic, as signally and impressively 
as anywhere else. It is, in fact, everywhere 
apparent in history, as one traces the glistening 
metallic threads in an ancient tapestry, which 
impart to it of their strength as well as of 
their sheen, and, while adding to its luster, 
preserve it from being torn apart. One can 
not imagine Rameses a Puritan : the haughty 
Egyptian, who knew not Joseph, who made the 
life of the Hebrews the cement of his walls, 
and whom the charming Miss Edwards pur- 
sues with her delightful persistency of scorn for 
his sins against the monuments. Yet to one 
who has any faith whatever in physiognomical 
indications, it is startling to see how his kingly 
face, reappearing from the mummy-folds of 
three thousand years, seems to prophesy the 
face, set and stern, with a deep trace of sadness 
in it, of the hardest-thinking New England 
farmer, looking out from his windy hill-side on 
the solemn problems of life and of the world. 
But Aristides was unmistakably a Puritan, 
whom Plato eulogized as having righteously 



56 €fje puritan £>pirvt 

fulfilled his trust: unsurpassed in justice, os- 
tracized on account of it ; holding high office, 
commanding armies skillfully and bravely, not 
leaving enough of worldly wealth to pay for 
his funeral. The magnificent statue in the 
Museum at Naples, supposed to be of him, 
remains in my thought, and I doubt not in 
the thought of many others present, as one of 
the grandest embodiments ever made, in 
yielding and responsive stone, of high intel- 
lectual dignity and power, with a moral 
elevation unsurpassed among men. Pericles 
was distinctly not a Puritan, though a far- 
sighted statesman and an eloquent orator ; 
fortifying Athens, giving magnificent impulse 
to art, and setting the shining diadem of the 
Parthenon on the brow of the queenliest city 
of Time. 

Epictetus was a Puritan : the freed slave 
who felt himself in relationship with God and 
with the universe ; to whom palaces and 
emperors were a trivial pageant ; who was 
consciously here on a divine errand ; who felt 
the touch of the Over-soul upon him ; whose 
maxim was to " suffer and abstain." Cicero 
was not, in spite of his high and attractive 



€tje puritan spirit 57 

speculation, his elaborate eloquence, his 
dazzling accomplishments, perhaps never sur- 
passed among men. 

In his theory of life, Marcus Aurelius had 
strong Puritanical tendencies, as had all the 
nobler and wiser stoics — Seneca himself, 
in his ethical writings. The Epicureans were 
always at the opposite extreme. 

How often the same temper has appeared S^ilSSr"*" 
in the Church, from the first age to the present, 
I need not remind you. 

Basil was an illustrious Puritan, though of 
sensitive genius and an admirable culture : who 
enjoined the three peremptory vows of poverty, 
chastity, and obedience ; who feared not the 
imperial forfeiture of his property, because he 
had none, nor any banishment to inhospitable 
regions, since he was everywhere the guest of 
God ; and who said, in practical effect, when 
the brutal deputy in Cappadocia threatened 
to cut out his liver if he did not obey an 
offensive order : " Thanks ! You will do me 
a favor. Where it is, it has bothered me ever 
since I can remember." * There is the essential 
Puritan temper, which it is no more easy to 

1 Vita S. Basilii, chap, xxxi, v. ep. Greg. Naz. 



58 €tje puritan spirit 

break down by assault than to burn the^Egean, 
or to upset the Apennines. 

Athanasius was a Puritan : ruling councils in 
the interest of what to him was divine, not 

with 

" The imperial stature, the colossal stride " 

of mere titular kings, but with the subtler and 
mightier force of a moral energy which almost 
none could withstand, and to whom the impe- 
rial tyranny which drove the Church from Alex- 
andria was, as he said, " a little cloud, that will 
soon pass." Augustine was another, writing 
quietly that " City of God," which has been a 
favorite in all generations of Puritan families, 
amid what seemed the imminent crash of a fall- 
ing world. 

Hildebrand was a Puritan (Gregory VII), 
strange as it seems : who strove with all the 
prodigious strength of genius, devotion, and 
unconquerable will, to purify the Church ac- 
cording to his conception of purity ; and who 
could honestly say, when he died at Salerno, 
" I have loved righteousness and hated ini- 
quity : therefore now I die in exile." Anselm 
was a Puritan : Archbishop of Canterbury, 
father of scholastic theology, who would rather 



€fje puritan spirit 59 

be a brother in the cloister than a prelate in 
the Church and an officer of the realm ; whose 
friends were frightened by the ascetic severities 
of his life ; and who was accustomed to say, in 
the temper of the most unrelenting of New 
England divines, that if he saw sin on one 
side and hell on the other, he would jump 
into the latter to escape the former ! x 

Bernard was a Puritan : who lashed the lux- 
ury of convents, and the glittering pomp and 
pride of churches, with an unsparing hand ; 
who admonished kings and pontiffs to think 
of themselves as stripped and unclean before 
the coming judgment of God ; who was an 
absolute iconoclast toward pictures and orna- 
ments, with the jeweled candelabra which tow- 
ered in churches ; and who valued the soul of 
the poorest peasant above all wealth of royal 
treasures. 

Wycliffe, Savonarola, Huss, Zwingli — Puri- 
tan traits are apparent in all ; in the Hugue- 
nots of La Rochelle and among the Cevennes ; 
in the Hollanders, pursuing with equal and 

1 " Conscientia mea teste non mentior, quia saspe ilium sub veritatis testi- 
monio profitentem audivimus, quoniam si hinc peccati horrorem, hinc 
inferni dolorem corporaliter cerneret, et necessario uni eorum immergi de- 
beret; prius infernum, quam peccatum, appeteret." — Eadmer: De Vita S. 
Anselmi, lib. ii, i6, D. 



6o Cfje puritan spirit 



incomparable faith and wrath their heroic battle 
of eighty years, for the land which they had 
redeemed from the sea, against Spain and 
Rome, and the fierce Inquisition. 

grii n FathSs ^ was t ^ ie same spirit, and no other, among 
our fathers in England, which led them to 
endure persecution there, and many of them 
to cross to this continent of unsubdued forests 
and unexplored wastes, to plant the small colo- 
nies which should be the foundation of great 
Commonwealths, with what they deemed truth 
and righteousness for their rule. The true 
place of the founders of New England in the 
history of the world is given them by the fact 
that this spirit was in them. We value them 
for what they did. We should honor them 
more for what they were. There were hypo- 
crites among them. The common temper was 
not, of course, equally or fully exhibited by all. 
They made many mistakes. They were often, 
no doubt, harsh and unlovely. It is easier, 
perhaps, to honor some of them now than 
it would have been to live with them then. 
But the essential and powerful temper which 
had been in Moses and in the prophets, in 
Paul and in Stephen, in illustrious stoics and in 



r 




iff 








THE PURITAN BY ST. GAUDENS 

Used by courtesy of the CENTURY COMPANY, owners of the copyright 



€fte puritan spirit 61 

great builders and reformers of the Church, 
was also in them. Because of it, they take 
their place among the morally illustrious of the 
world. They stand unabashed, and in spirit 
undimmed, in the most illustrious succession 
of Time. Because of it, till the continent disap- 
pears, their fame can not fail from the records 
of men. Because of it, their holy and happy 
renown will be immortal on high ! Woe be to 
us, Ladies and Gentlemen, if ever we fail to 
remember them with honor, or to contem- 
plate their part in the history of mankind with 
admiration and a triumphing praise. 

A monument has been raised to them at 
Plymouth, on a spot near which they landed. 
It is wholly fitting that another be raised, as 
is now, I learn, proposed, on the site of their 
departure from the old world to the new. The 
two should stand as answering towers — Mar- 
tello towers, commemorating hearts that were 
as resonant iron, and words that were hammers; 
between which the unfailing wires of reverent 
remembrance shall bind not Delft and Ply- 
mouth alone, but all the hearts fearless of 
man, and steadfast for righteousness, in both 
the continents. 



6. In early New 
England 



62 €l)e puritan spirit 

This was the Puritan temper in New England 
in the earlier time. 'And, really, the secret of 
their strenuous struggle with Baptists and 
Quakers was in the fact that in these they 
encountered the same spirit which was in 
themselves, under special and differing forms 
of faith ; so that it was fire fighting fire, an 
almost irresistible force striking an almost 
immovable obstacle. It was the crossing of 
blades of Toledo, with different etchings and 
embossings on hilt and scabbard, but neither 
inferior to the other in the temper of the 
steel, or in the sharpness of edge and point. 
No wonder that sparks flew like flashes out 
of surcharged opposing clouds, and that the 
ringing clash of those unsurpassed weapons 
still echoes in history. 

The same indomitable Puritan spirit survived 
the early colonial times, always seeking not to 
decorate life or to ornament society, but to 
assert personal freedom under God, and to 
innovate for righteousness, leading the march 
toward better ages. It sought always to lay 
foundations, to build vast walls, and then was 
ready to leave it to others to tone and color 
them, and set the pictured glass in the 
windows. 



€f>e puritan Spirit 6 



3 



Samuel Adams was a Puritan, if ever there 
was one : son of a deacon in the old South 
Church ; carefully trained in his father's ways ; 
of whom Hutchinson said that, though he was 
poor, such was his inflexible disposition that 
no office could bribe him ; whom Gage 
excepted by name from his offer of pardon 
to penitent rebels ; who raised and ruled the 
eager democracy of the town and the state, 
and to whom Washington was no more than 
another, if he did not succeed. 

Colonel Abraham Davenport was a Puritan : 
who sat in the governor's council at Hartford 
on the extraordinary dark day, May 19, 1780, 
when chickens went to roost in the morning, 
and cattle came lowing from the fields, when 
a pall of darkness swept through the sky as 
if the sun had been suddenly extinguished, 
and when the Day of Judgment was trem- 
blingly thought to be at hand. The House 
of Representatives had already adjourned, and 
it was proposed to adjourn the council. " The 
Day of Judgment is at hand," said the Colonel, 
" or it is not. If not, there is no occasion for 
adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found 
doing my duty. Bring in the candles." 



64 €fje puritan spirit 

Samuel Hopkins was a Puritan : who 
wrought with the utmost energy and patience 
of his acute and laborious mind to vindicate 
the ways of God to man ; who, on behalf of 
the enslaved African, fought that enraged aris- 
tocracy of Newport whose splendid wealth 
had on it, to his eye, the infernal scorch 
of cruel oppression ; and who, in the midst 
of utmost poverty, held his spirit aloft in 
communion with God, and in an almost 
seraphic meditation. 

days" recent ^ ls on h T true to ^ e f acts t0 sa y tnat ^ e 
same spirit appeared afterward in those who 

differed widely from his faith, or from any 
accepted and articulated scheme of the New 
England fathers. The intensity of conviction, 
of which I have spoken as characterizing 
Puritanism, is an intensity of individual con- 
viction. It may therefore make comparatively 
little, as often it has made, of general creeds, 
or of any systems to which others have agreed. 
It affirms the opinions held at the time by the 
personal mind, and is sometimes almost ready 
to say, with the Quaker to his wife, "All the 
world seems queer, Sally, except thee and me ; 
and thee is a little so." While devoted, there- 



€J)e puritan spirit 65 

fore, to its own conclusions, it can not escape 
the responsibility of leaving each following 
generation to do its own thinking, and to 
come to its possibly antagonizing convictions. 
As a system of thought, the Puritan element 
enters into alliance with diverse theories. As 
a spirit, it survives strange vicissitudes of 
opinion. So it was that Unitarianism had 
under it its fair opportunity — was almost 
certain to appear at some time, and with the 
old temper to try to project the new and 
attractive scheme of speculation into the 
thought and life of society. Not a little of 
the spirit which had preceded him appeared 
in Channing, who had early learned to honor 
the stoics, and who had taken from Hopkins 
enduring impressions ; who was as bold as he 
was gentle, cultured, and suave ; and who 
faced slavery, in the Federal-street meeting- 
house, and in Faneuil Hall, as if he believed 
in a personal devil, and that this was the 
incarnation of him. The same, too, was not 
unapparent in Buckminster, differing so widely 
in opinion from the father whose spirit was 
yet ever manifest in him. It is not hard to 
trace the same element in Emerson, or in 



66 Cf)e puritan spirit 

Bushnell, or in Theodore Parker. I may not 
name some among the living, in whom equally 
it appears. 

Wendell Phillips was a Puritan : supple as 
an athlete, graceful as Apollo, gentle as a 
woman among his friends, to whom eloquence 
was an idiom, and the delightful grace of 
conversation both an ornament and a weapon, 
but from the silver bow of whose musical lips 
flew fiery shafts against whatever appeared 
to him wrong, and whose white plume shone 
always in the dangerous van of the heady 
fight. He had in his veins the blood, and in 
his spirit the Calvinism, of his first ancestor 
in this country, of whom it is recorded that 
having been ordained in the Church of Eng- 
land, and having served honorably in one of 
its parishes, he would not minister to the 
Congregational Church at Watertown unless 
it would reordain him for itself, treating as null 
the Bishop's rite. 

John Brown was in some sense a Puritan, 
though certainly the sword of the Lord and of 
Gideon was not wisely wielded by him, and 
he might have learned more from the Sermon 
on the Mount than he did from the Decalogue, 
and from favorite prophets. 



€|>e puritan Spirit 67 

Ladies, and Gentlemen, this spirit is by no 
means dead in the land, though secular 
success may seem at times to have fettered 
or dissolved it ; though a daintier culture may 
have made men insensitive, if not positively 
averse, to its austere dignity and power ; vm 
though it may almost seem whelmed and spirit still 
buried under the rush of incessant immigration, 
from lands whose manners and moral life it 
has not trained. It will surely reappear, if 
too daring assaults are made on the ancient 
order and faith of the New England churches, 
or on that system of public schools which is 
to us a great inheritance ; or if socialistic, 
anarchic theories seek to minister to passion, 
to subvert public order, and to conquer, defile, 
and despoil the continent. 

In it is really, as I believe, our assurance of IX 

J The Puritan 

the future. Without it our civilization will Spirit ouR 

Assurance of 

rot. All progress in what calls itself " cul- THE FuTURE 
ture " will only make us tender, luxurious, and 
inert, if this be absent. All simply material 
accumulations will but make in the end a 
bigger bonfire, to be touched by the torch of 
agrarian passion. The nation, without this 
spirit in it, however plethoric in wealth, how- 



68 €fje puritan Spirit 

ever boastful of its strength, however famous in 
the world, will become at last but a bald-headed 
Samson. It may trust in some ineffectual wig 
to replace its vanished native strength, but the 
gates of Gaza will not even tremble before its 
touch. 

But with this spirit, affirmative of the truth 
as God gives us to see it, devoted to righteous- 
ness, and to Him who eternally advances it in 
the earth, seeing the glory of man revealed in 
his relation to the immensities, and in his 
essential correspondence with righteousness, 
and looking for the ages, even here on the 
earth, in which that is to triumph, for which we 
are ready ourselves to labor, to suffer, and to 
endure, no difficulties will be too great to be 
encountered, and no assaults or perils fatal. 
The moral life of the nation will then equal 
its physical might and its great opportunity. 
Its virtue will not fail, and the iron in its blood 
will not be found wanting. 
x Here, then, is our duty plainly before us : 

Our Duty to 

the puritan not to eulogize this spirit, but to incorporate it, 
and make it a part of our personal life ; not to 
put it away from us, as something which spe- 
cially pertained to the past, but to set it forth 



Spirit 



Cl)e puritan spirit 69 

afresh in our modern conditions. We may 
present it in gentler exhibition than it found 
in the old time. We may combine with it, as 
we ought, an ampler love of grace and beauty. 
We may rise, as we ought, to higher levels of 
spiritual sympathy with differing opinions than 
were familiar, perhaps possible, to our fathers. 
We may be more tender toward doubting 
minds, and more eager to minister to those 
who are walking, with overshadowed and sad- 
dened souls, amid the mighty and mystic prob- 
lems of life and of the universe. But we must 
retain the same spirit in ourselves, and make 
it, as far as our influence goes, generally con- 
trolling, organific in the nation, if we would do 
our work aright. For it is true now, as true in 
the midst of all the beauty and all the wealth 
with which commerce, invention, and art sur- 
round us, as true in this city of the Puritan's 
pride and of our admiration, as it was when 
Paul wrote to the despised disciples in Ephe- 
sus, under the shadow of that temple of Diana 
to which princes were tributaries and whose 
renown was in all the world — " We wrestle not 
against flesh and blood, but against principali- 
ties, against powers, against the rulers of the 



jo ci)c puritan spirit 

darkness of this world, against spiritual wick- 
edness in high places. Wherefore take unto 
you the whole armour of God, that ye may 
be able to withstand in the evil day, and hav- 
ing done all, to stand." 

We want the same temper, amid the changed 
world in which our personal lot has been cast, 
which has been in those who have stood, in all 
their times, against corruption in Church or in 
State, with hearts that no more failed, and 
brows that no more blanched, than does the 
granite before the rush of the storm ; the same 
temper which was in our fathers two hundred 
and seventy years ago, when they left whatever 
was beautiful at home, in obedience to con- 
science, and faced, without flinching, the sea 
and the savage ; when they sought not high 
things, and were joyfully ready to be stepping- 
stones for others, if they might advance the 
kingdom of God ; but when they gave to this 
New England a life which has molded its 
rugged strength from that day to this, has 
made it a monument surpassing all others 
which man can build, and a perpetual living 
seminary of character and of power for all the 
land ; — a life, please God ! which shall never 



€f)e f&uritan spirit 



71 



be extinct, among the stronger souls of men, 
till the earth itself shall have vanished like a 
dream. 




72 



€f)c puritan spirit 



SYNOPSIS 



I. The Need of the Puritan Spirit 

II. Opposition to the Puritan Spirit 

III. Wide Area of the Puritan Spirit 

IV. Elements of the Puritan Spirit 



Page 6 

7 
8 



1. An intense conviction of apprehended truth. 

2. An intense sense of the authority of righteousness. 

3. A profound assurance of God's righteous rule. 

4. A profound sense of the dignity of man. 

V. Deficiencies in the Puritan Spirit 

1. Want of interest in things esthetic. 

2. Contempt for minor elegancies of life. 

3. Lack of affectionate sympathy with questioning minds. 



25 



VI. Magnificent Qualities of the Puritan Spirit 

1. A masterful sincerity. 

2. A majestic Ideal. 

3. A superb and shining courage. 

4. A triumphant disregard of institutions. 

5. The clearest vision of things celestial. 

VII. The Puritan Spirit Cosmical 



36 



47 



In the Old Testament. 
In the New Testament. 
In Secular History. 
In Ecclesiastical History. 
In the Pilgrim Fathers. 
In Early New England. 
In Recent Days. 



VIII. The Puritan Spirit Still Living. 



67 



IX. The Puritan Spirit our Assurance of the Future 67 
X. Our Duty to the Puritan Spirit 68 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2006 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranbeny Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



